SAINT-AYISI SAMUEL

Public procurement is the process by which governments and other publicly-funded entities acquire goods, works, and services needed to implement public projects. It accounts for at least 15% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP), and even more in African countries. The Public Procurement Authority (PPA) is the institution mandated to ensure public procurement in the country. The PPA is established by the Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663) as a regulatory body responsible for the effective implementation of the Public Procurement Law in Ghana. The Authority seeks to ensure fairness, transparency and non-discrimination in public procurement in order to promote a competitive local industry and increase the confidence of varied stakeholders in public procurement processes in the country and beyond. The Public Procurement Law, 2003 (Act 663) is a comprehensive legislation designed to eliminate the shortcomings and organizational weaknesses which were inherent in pub...

The Writer Examinations at the Ghana School of Law for the professional certificate have come under huge criticisms due to massive failures of students yearly. Some complain of questions out of the syllabus, other students also complain of unknown marking schemes set, to assess the students. There is a school of thought out there who argues that there is an attempt by the General Legal Counsel and the Chief Justice, to control the legal education system by their own will. A cursory look at the utterance of the Justice Sophia Akuffo, “If people want to do their own law practice, they can go on the internet. Members of the public can go on the internet and turn themselves into lawyers if they want to.” The Chief Justices utterance gave some section of the public a view that the massive failure of some law students is a deliberate attempt to limit the number of students who would be called to the bar. In a rebuttal to some of these claims, the General Legal Counsel (G...

The Writer The Pension Scheme of Ghana as in many African nations, started as far back 1950 in the colonial times. The legislation regulating the Pension Scheme at that time was the Pensions Ordinance Number 42 (Cap 30). The United Kingdoms retirement plan for the country's working class involved the set-up of a number of provident funds, which were subsequently transferred into a basic social security scheme in 1965. The growth of the pension sector necessitated greater control and monitoring. This led to the establishment of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) in 1972, to administer the Social Security Scheme. It was later identified that the existing SSNIT pension was not providing adequate security for retirees. The phenomenon led to the then President to establish a commission to deal with the matter. The Presidential Commission on Pensions in 2004 was put into place to address these concerns, and its recommendations led to the passing of ...

The Writer In context of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana in specific provision of Chapter Five (5), the fundamental human rights of both the lecturers and the students in the "sex for grades" investigative piece ought to be respected. In the case of Professor Gyampo, he proposed to the prospective student to marry her. In the face of the law, Professor Gyampo committed no offence thereof.  However, there is no specific provision in the 1992 Constitution which captures student-lecturer relation. Although there is no specific provision protecting the relationship of the two parties, per Article 165 of the 1992 Constitution, it is impliedly stated that sexual relationship of both Professor Gyampo and the lady is also a form of right exercisable by all citizens of Ghana. This is therefore important to identify the basic rights of Professor Gyampo, to justify his action of marriage proposal to the lady.  Dr. Butakor and Dr Igbeneghu, on the other hand also committe...

The Writer Restitution is the ordering of a court of payment of money or the return of property found to have been stolen by the accused person. A judge in a criminal case could only make restitution orders against an accused person. Section 146 of Act 30, therefore, provides that where a person is convicted of having stolen or having obtained property fraudulently or by false pretences, the Court convicting that person may order that the property or a part of the property be restored to the person who appears to the Court to be entitled to it. And so in The Republic v Circuit Court Judge Hohoe; Ex Parte Atalu and Another , the High Court in quashing the purported restitution orders of the Circuit Court held that restitution orders could only be made against convicted persons and not against strangers to the criminal charge. However, with the passage of the Criminal Procedure Code (Amendment) (No.2) Act, 1964 (Act 254), a number of inroads have been made in the law of rest...

Writer Under the criminal justice system, a crime is regarded as an offence against the state and not the victim. The state steps into the shoes of the victim and prosecutes the offender. In the end, the state focuses on punishing the offender to either pay a fine to the state or commit the offender to a prison term. There is very little or  no attention to the needs of the victim, hence leaving the victim unsatisfied, impoverished and bitter. In view of this challenge, there are other alternative methods of settling criminal disputes outside the traditional criminal justice system. One of such methods is the victim-offender mediation. Victim offender mediation aims at restoring damaged or broken relationships between an offender and a victim by providing both parties an opportunity to meet face to face to address their differences through mediation. This is also called transformative justice or restorative justice. It enables parties to settle their disputes without going...

Saint-Ayisi Samuel In criminal matters, the fundamental human right, as some say, is curtailed immediately someone is charged by the police. It is plausible to indicate that, the principle of the criminal justice in Ghana makes provision for fair trial, fair hearing (audi alteram partem), right to privacy and even, exercise of fundamental human rights enshrined in Chapter five (5) of the 1992 Constitution. Notably, the right to privacy is a fundamental human right hence, admissible in criminal matters even with the accused. Privacy is the right of individual to be protected against the intrusion into his/her personal life; or affairs; or his/her family by direct physical means or by publication of information. However, in most criminal charges and criminal prosecutions, some State Authorities have opposed to these suggestions because they believe that laws intended to protect accused persons of their privacy could be used to prevent the State prosecutors from reve...

The fundamental rights and freedoms on speech and expression is explicitly enshrined in the 1992 Constitution of Ghana. This is clearly stipulated in the Chapter five (5) of the Constitution. Article 12 Clause (1) of the 1992 Constitution states that "all persons shall have the right to- (a) freedom of speech and expression, which shall include freedom of the press and other media; (b) freedom of thought, conscience and belief, which shall include academic freedom". In a more elaborative way in relation to the rights and freedoms of the operations of the media, Chapter 12 of the 1992 in details, defines the expressive powers of the media without any interference. These provisions have some similarities (if not the same) with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights and Article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rig...